The illusion is perfect. When the experiment is ended and the mirrors are again swung against the sides, at G G, the spectators see nothing but the backs of them, which are covered with wood; the cabinet is really empty, and no one can discover what modification has taken place in its interior during the disappearance of the woman.
FIG. 3.—SECTION EXPLANATORY OF THE CABINET.
In the second arrangement, which is shown in vertical section in Fig. 3, the young man gets up onto the shelf c n, at the upper part of the cabinet, by the aid of the bracket T, and then pulls down over him the mirror b c, which was fastened to the top of the cabinet. This mirror being inclined at an angle of 45 deg. reflects the top, and the spectators imagine that they see the back of the cabinet over the shelf just as they did before.
The box which the harlequin enters is based upon precisely the same principle. Its interior is hung with paper banded alternately blue and white. When the harlequin enters it he places himself in one of the angles and pulls toward him two mirrors which hide him completely, and which reflect the opposite side of the box, so that the spectator is led to believe that he sees the back of it. In this case one of the angles at the back of the box is not apparent, but the colored stripes prevent the spectator from noticing the fact.
The Magic Portfolio.
This is an apparatus which an itinerant physicist might have been seen a few years ago exhibiting in the squares and at street corners. His method was to have a spectator draw a card, which he then placed between the four sheets of paper which, folded crosswise, formed the flaps of his portfolio. When he opened the latter again a few instants afterward the card had disappeared, or rather had become transformed. Profiting then by the surprise of his spectators the showman began to offer them his magic portfolio at the price of five sous for the small size and ten for the large.
The portfolio was made of two square pieces of cardboard connected by four strings, these latter being fixed in such a way that when the two pieces of cardboard were open and juxtaposed the external edge of each of them was connected with the inner edge of the other.
This constituted, after a manner, a double hinge that permitted of the portfolio being opened from both sides. To one pair of strings there were glued, back to back, two sheets of paper, which, when folded over, formed the flaps of the portfolio. It was only necessary, then, to open the latter in one direction or the other to render it impossible to open more than one of the two sets of flaps.
This device is one that permits of a large number of tricks being performed, since every object put under one of the sets of flaps will apparently disappear or be converted into something else, at the will of the prestidigitator (Fig. 4).